Complaint Review: Kitano Hotel

I stayed at the luxury hotel Kitano last June. When checking out a was given a final bill and the slips for my individual in-house charges. Upon reviewing them when I got home, I discovered that each time I ate in the hotel's restaurant or drank in their bar, they had rounded up the total due just above the tip line. for instance, if the tab was $23.00 and tax $1.98, they rounded the bill to $25.00

When I called the hotel, at first they denied this had happened. After I demanded to speak with the Manager, they put their "Controller" on the line and he knew exactly what I was talking about. He said it was because the NY City sales tax had just gone from 8.25% to 8.625%. When I pointed out to him that the tax shown on each was was in fact calculated out at the new rate, he said he would have to call me back.

When he called me back a few days later, he said it was a computer-programming error at their billing firm but he would not tell me its name, how long this had been going on, how many people were affected, or where the money was going.

I said I was going to try to refere this to a lawyer for investigation and a possible class-action suit. Mr. Kusada asked me to hold off while he did some further checking.

In his last call he said he had learned that the extra pennies on each bill were being paid to the City as sales tax. I told him that didn't make sense since the proper sales tax is shown on each bill

I think this is a case of somebody figuring that they can literally steal pennies with impunity. A penny here, a penny there, and pretty soon its thousands. And if it's true that its the hotel's "billing service" doing this (which he admitted has thousands of customers), then it might be millions.

Stephen
satellite beach, Florida
U.S.A.